Showing papers in "Law and Social Inquiry-journal of The American Bar Foundation in 2000"
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors examine the political origins of these four constitutional revolutions and suggest that judicial empowerment is in many cases the consequence of a conscious strategy undertaken by threatened political and economic elites seeking to preserve their hegemony vis-a-vis the growing influence of "peripheral" groups in crucial majoritarian policymaking arenas.
Abstract: Drawing upon an analysis of the political vectors behind constitutional reform in Israel (1992), Canada (1982) New Zealand (1990), and South Africa (1993), the article suggests that the trend toward constitutionalization in culturally divided polities has not been adequately delineated by extant theories of constitutional transformation. An examination of the political origins of these four constitutional revolutions suggests that judicial empowerment is in many cases the consequence of a conscious strategy undertaken by threatened political and economic elites seeking to preserve their hegemony vis-a-vis the growing influence of “peripheral” groups in crucial majoritarian policymaking arenas. In response to perceived threats by peripheral groups, elites who possess disproportionate access to and influence upon the legal arena often initiate a constitutional entrenchment of rights in order to insulate policymaking from popular political pressure. Power is transferred from majoritarian decision-making arenas to national high courts, where they assume their policy preferences will find greater support. This process of conscious judicial empowerment is likely to occur (a) when the judiciary's public reputation for political impartiality and rectitude is relatively high and (b) when the courts are likely to rule, by and large, in accordance with the cultural propensities and policy preferences of the traditionally hegemonic elites.
148 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors explore the ways a particular form of hostile work environment harassment, referred to as chain yanking, poaches on the realm of ambiguous humor to effect male group solidarity and women's disempowerment, and examine the contradictory effects of this tactic-counter-tactic pairing on the naming and claiming of the harm of sexual harassment.
Abstract: This article addresses the question of women's seeming rejection of sexual harassment law by refusing to apply the label “sexual harassment” in the face of incidents that would easily qualify as such. Building on the work of Bumiller (1988) and the tradition of sociolegal studies focusing on understanding the power of the law in its everyday context (e.g., Merry 1979; Engel 1987; Sarat and Kearns 1993), this analysis explores the “tactical milieu” in which both hostile work environment sexual harassment and tactics for its resistance are produced. Using in-depth interviews with both women and men, the author explores the ways a particular form of hostile work environment harassment–dubbed “chain yanking”–poaches on the realm of ambiguous humor to effect male group solidarity and women's disempowerment. A common countertactic–”not taking it personal”– is analyzed for its simultaneous power as resistance and unwitting collaboration. The contradictory effects of this tactic-countertactic pairing on the naming and claiming of the harm of sexual harassment are examined, as well as the implications this has for combating sexual harassment in the workplace.
99 citations
TL;DR: The authors explores the dilemmas and contradictions associated with the enforcement of the Chinese Exclusion Act, focusing on the early years during which the most glaring dilemma were exposed, and argues that the difficulties encountered by enforcement personnel, and the sometimes chaotic and inconsistent nature of enforcement, were related to paradoxes associated with prevailing assumptions about the nature of race, class, and identity more generally.
Abstract: In 1882, Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act, barring the entry into the United States of all Chinese laborers. This article explores the dilemmas and contradictions associated with the enforcement of this legislation, focusing on the early years during which the most glaring dilemmas were exposed. Drawing from congressional documents, as well as unpublished letters, memoranda, and circulars of immigration officials, I argue that the difficulties encountered by enforcement personnel, and the sometimes chaotic and inconsistent nature of enforcement, were related to paradoxes associated with prevailing assumptions about the nature of race, class, and identity more generally. I then document how these same paradoxes, and the techniques employed by inspectors to deal with them, ironically facilitated aspiring immigrants’resistance to the full force of the law. This case study, with its emphasis on the contradictions implicit in the law and the dialectical quality of enforcement and resistance, may contribute to OUR understanding of the law's fundamental indeterminacy. Finally, I suggest that the focus on the everyday dilemmas faced by frontline officials may tell us more about the ordinary life of the law and its indeterminacy than the heavily scrutinized landmark cases that constitute much of the literature.
95 citations
TL;DR: The authors found that people's acceptance of policies is shaped to an important degree by the fairness of the procedures used by authorities to make policy When policies are fairly made, they gain widespread support, even among those who may feel that the consequences of the policy for them or their group are undesirable or even unfair.
Abstract: A key problem in trying to manage diverse societies is finding social policies that will be acceptable to all individuals and groups Studies suggest that this problem may not be as intractable as is often believed, since people's acceptance of policies is shaped to an important degree by the fairness of the procedures used by authorities to make policy When policies are fairly made, they gain widespread support, even among those who may feel that the consequences of the policy for them or their group are undesirable or even unfair These findings support an optimistic view of the ability of authorities to manage diverse societies On the other hand, research suggests that the ability of procedural justice to bridge differences among individuals and groups may not be equally strong under all conditions People's willingness to accept policies is more influenced by procedural justice judgments when they identify with the society that the authorities represent and view them as representing a group of which they are members They are less influenced by procedural justice judgments when they identify more strongly with subgroups than with society and/or view the authorities as representatives of a group to which they do not belong
87 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors examine the agency of the state in promoting a self-binding regime of investment rules and its potential impact on domestic constitutional regimes that deviate from the norms expressed in the transnational investment-rules regime.
Abstract: The new model for economic and political renovation mandates the entrenchment, beyond the reach of majoritarian control, of rules for the free movement of transnational capital. This “new constitutionalism” removes key aspects of economic life from the influence of domestic politics within nation states. A manifestation of this new orthodoxy is the network of bilateral investment treaties designed to ensure foreign investors security from “discrimination” and “expropriation,” and conferring standing on investors to sue in the event that their investment interests are impaired. This paper examines the agency of the state in promoting this self-binding regime of investment rules and its potential impact on domestic constitutional regimes. Of particular concern here are constitutional arrangements that protect property, such as that recently enacted in the Republic of South Africa, that deviate from the norms expressed in the transnational investment-rules regime.
74 citations
TL;DR: The survey indicates that minority graduates are no less successful than white graduates, whether success is measured by the log of current income, self-reported satisfaction, or an index of service contributions.
Abstract: This paper reports the results of a 1997-98 survey designed to explore the careers of the University of Michigan Law School's minority graduates from the classes of 1970 through 1996, and of a random sample of Michigan Law School's white alumni who graduated during the same years. It is to date the most detailed quantitative exploration of how minority students fare after they graduate from law school and enter law practice or related careers. The results reveal that almost all of Michigan Law School's minority graduates pass a bar exam and go on to have careers that appear successful by conventional measures. In particular, the survey indicates that minority graduates (defined so as to include graduates with African American, Latino, and Native American backgrounds) are no less successful than white graduates, whether success is measured by the log of current income, self-reported satisfaction, or an index of service contributions. Also, although an admissions index that combines LSAT scores and undergraduate grade-point average is a significant predictor of law school grades, it does not predict career success on any of our three outcome measures. Michigan is a highly selective law school; our results may not generalize to people who have graduated from other law schools.
72 citations
TL;DR: The field of public law in political science is somewhat ill defined and practitioners range from political theorists interested in the normative underpinnings of the law to statisticians interested in correlates of judicial voting as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: The field of "public law" in political science is somewhat ill defined. Its practitioners range from political theorists interested in the normative underpinnings of the law to statisticians interested in the correlates of judicial voting. The output of the Supreme Court, however, looms large on the landscape for many approaches to the field. In the first decades of the century, political scientists were unlikely to focus specifically on the explanations for the Court's decisions but were more likely to be interested in a broad range of issues related to the courts and the law. Since the "behavioral revolution" that swept the social sciences in the 1950s, however, judicial decision making has been at the core of the field. Over the past several decades, substantial progress has been made in identifying patterns of judicial voting behavior and the determinants of Court decisions. That progress, though real, has also been narrow. The scholarly focus has been on individual justices and how they cast their votes, leaving a great deal of the judicial process relatively unexplored.
69 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors examine the prospect for transnational advocacy and regimes as a way to buttress national labor laws and institutions in an interlocking mosaic and thus ensure the continuation of strong systems of industrial relations under conditions of increasing economic integration.
Abstract: This paper examines prospects for transnational advocacy and regimes as a way to buttress national labor laws and institutions in an interlocking mosaic and thus ensure the continuation of strong systems of industrial relations under conditions of increasing economic integration. We argue that there is a role for transnational solutions as a supplement to national systems, and we assess the conditions necessary to make this approach effective. We look at a variety of possible actors and arenas that could foster transnationalism and provide illustrations of transnational advocacy and regime building. We conclude that elements of a multilevel, public-private transnational regime are present in some parts of the world and that these elements can occasionally be knit together. We find that prospects for an effective and sustainable system of transnational multi-level regulation are greater when regional integration pacts such as the EU and NAFTA create transnational norms or forums. But, based on preliminary analysis of transnational advocacy and regulation in these two areas, we also conclude that no fully effective system has yet emerged.
68 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors explore the complex entanglements of democracy and governing through crime and argue that the enormous expansion of government through crime endangers the effort to reinvent democracy for the twenty-first century.
Abstract: To an unprecedented degree American society at the turn of the twentieth century is governed through crime. Nearly three percent of adults are in the custody of the correctional system. Crime and fear of crime enter into a large part of the fundamental decisions in life: where to live, how to raise your family, where to locate your business, where and when to shop, and so on. The crime victim has become the veritable outline of a new form of political subjectivity. This essay explores the complex entanglements of democracy and governing through crime. The effort to build democratic governance after the American Revolution was carried out in part through the problem of crime and punishment. Today, however, the enormous expansion of governing through crime endangers the effort to reinvent democracy for the twenty-first century.
58 citations
TL;DR: This paper found that minority partner representation has a positive effect on minority associate representation, which is statistically significant in the case of women and Asian Americans, in a sample of 97 law firms from 1980 to 1990.
Abstract: This paper tests the effects of minority partner representation on minority associate representation in a sample of 97 law firms from 1980 to 1990. We perform separate analyses for women, African Americans, Hispanics, and Asian Americans, and we consider both within-group and cross-group effects. We find that minority partner representation has a positive effect on minority associate representation, which is statistically significant in the case of women and Asian Americans. Our findings are consistent with lawyers’own accounts, which emphasize the impact of partner composition on the distribution of rewards within law firms. We also show how our findings clarify previous studies about the effects of minority representation on the distribution of organizational rewards, focusing particularly on Kanter's work and subsequent related research.
52 citations
TL;DR: The wrongful death statutes represent a heretofore unrecognized conjuncture of the beginnings of the modem law of torts with the nineteenth-century legal reconstruction of the family.
Abstract: The wrongful death statutes enacted in most states during the mid-nineteenth century have long represented a classic moment in the narrative of American legal history. Historians have not observed, however, that American wrongful death statutes amended the English act on which they were modeled to introduce a gender asymmetry peculiar to the United States. Led by New York, most American jurisdictions limited wrongful death actions to “the widow and next of kin” of the decedent, categories that did not include husbands of deceased wives. Thus, a wife could bring a wrongful death action for the death of her husband, but a husband could not bring a wrongful death action on his own behalf for the death of his wife. The wrongful death statutes represent a heretofore unrecognized conjuncture of the beginnings of the modem law of torts with the nineteenth-century legal reconstruction of the family. The statutes mowed accident litigation away from an eighteenth-century model of masters suing for loss of the services of a servant, slave, wife, or child, toward the now more familiar model of suits for loss of wages and support. Moreover, the gender asymmetry of the statutes embodied and reproduced a new nineteenth-century conception of the family in which men worked as free laborers and women were confined to relatively narrow domestic roles, removed from the market and dependent for their support on the wages of their husbands. Indeed, the statutes anticipated by over half a century the American welfare state's two-track approach to support for wage-earning men and dependent women.
TL;DR: The relationship between how rationality is conceived and how democracy is practiced in the Bureau of Reclamation, a water development agency in the Department of Interior, was analyzed in this article, where the efforts of some inside the agency to institutionalize rational decision-making models, partly in response to new environmental law, expanded the number and range of interest groups that participated in its decisions and incorporated their preferences into their models for evaluating plans.
Abstract: This article analyzes the relationship between how rationality is conceived and how democracy is practiced in the Bureau of Reclamation, a water development agency in the Department of Interior. The efforts of some inside the agency to institutionalize rational decision-making models, partly in response to new environmental law, expanded the number and range of interest groups that participated in its decisions fry incorporating their preferences into their models for evaluating plans. But the terms under which people could express their values and interests were strictly controlled in ways that some felt misrepresented their concerns. How we conceive of rationality has important implications for how and which people are included in bureaucratic decision making.
TL;DR: In this article, a mixture of court docket data and case files was used to construct a data set of business litigation in Rhode Island Superior Court during 1987 and 1988, and they concluded that contextual economic conditions favoring the creation of long-term business relationships help prevent litigation between firms.
Abstract: Using a mixture of court docket data and case files, we construct a data set of business litigation in Rhode Island Superior Court during 1987 and 1988. Business litigation is defined as a suit involving an economic firm as both a plaintiff and a defendant. The empirical analysis complements recent scholarship providing answers to descriptive questions about the frequency, nature of, parties to, and intensity of the business litigation docket. Using Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) codes, indicators of industry participation in litigation are developed, and positive analysis undertaken to explain variation across industries. Several hypothesis are developed and tested using quantitative analysis. We conclude that contextual economic conditions favoring the creation of long-term business relationships help prevent litigation between firms.
TL;DR: The case of the woman who gave birth to a child who fell into the toilet bowl is described in this paper, where the woman was found guilty of homicide based on what was construed as a confession, her employer's statement, and medical testimony.
Abstract: A society which penalizes some children because they are not white, others because they are not male, indoctrinating in them a sense of worthlessness, can still lay the blame for the waste of its young on the bad mothers who have somehow failed to be superhuman, who have somehow failed to rear, in a callous and ruthless social order, welladjusted obedient, achieving, nonalienated children. —Adrienne Rich, On Lies, Secrets, and Silence: Selected Prose 1966-1978 Suffering from abdominal pain, a young woman in eastern Venezuela went to a physician. The physician did not examine her but injected her with a sedative and sent her home to the place where she worked as a domestic. Awakening with intense cramps, she went to the bathroom and gave birth to a girl, who fell into the toilet bowl. On the basis of what was construed as a confession, her employer's statement, and medical testimony, the woman was convicted of homicide. The major issue was the legal significance of her racialization as “indigenous.” We suggest that her trial shows how courts construe structural violence directed against poor women of color as criminal conduct; ironically, this transformation was effected through culturally based arguments, presented by the defense, which claimed that the woman was ignorant of “Western culture” and Venezuelan legal norms, including the prohibition against infanticide. In the face of a cholera epidemic, dominant institutions used the case to suggest that “indigenous culture” could explain hundreds of deaths. Comparison with trials in the capital indicates that as globalization forces some 80% of Venezuelans into poverty, these widely publicized trials turn stereotypes of poor citizens as impoverished, immoral, and criminal into arguments that legitimate the repressive functions of the nation-state.
TL;DR: In the first chapter of Just Words, Conley and O'Barr as mentioned in this paper note that the study of language is at the heart of the law and society enterprise, and that much legal work involves the use of language to specify social and economic relationships in contracts, trusts, wills, conveyances, and the like.
Abstract: As Conley and O'Barr (pp. 1-14) note, in the first chapter of Just Words, the study of language is at the heart of the law and society enterprise. Language is both the core technology and the core topic of law and legal work. As a technology, language is the means by which statutes and their siblings-regulations, charters, treaties, administrative guidelines, codes of practice, and so on-are formulated and inscribed. Much legal work involves the use of language to specify social and economic relationships: in contracts, trusts, wills, conveyances, and the like. Drafting is, however, persistently confounded by the indeterminacy of language. Law is one of the practical solutions evolved by modern societies to the problem of the indeterminate relationship between language and its referents. As a topic then, legal work also attempts to define authoritatively what language means
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors examine how universities implement and enforce the mandates of both Title VII and Title IX through exploratory research about sexual harassment complaint procedures at a public university system on the West Coast.
Abstract: Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Title IX of the Educational Amendments of 1972 make universities liable for sexual harassment that occurs within both the employment and academic contexts. This article examines how universities implement and enforce the mandates of both Title VII and Title IX through exploratory research about sexual harassment complaint procedures at a public university system on the West Coast. In-depth interviews with personnel at each campus shed light on problems with inserting a complaint resolution process into an institution that simultaneously strives to eliminate sexual harassment, while wanting to protect itself from liability. This inherent conflict of goals is reflected in the differing roles of the Title IX office and the Women's Resource Center, in creation of a user friendly policy, and in the two branches of dispute resolution.
TL;DR: The condition in which Bakwena women in Botswana and Muslim women in Kenya rely on more than formal law is the main theme in recent books by Susan Hirsch and Anne Griffiths as discussed by the authors, showing how women are relying on a combination of individual rights and family-based entitlements for their day-to-day survival.
Abstract: To comply with international human rights standards, many African governments are gradually replacing their gender-specific and family-based customary and religious laws with new legislation molded on an individualistic, equal-status ideal. Judicial reforms and legal outreach programs that set out to make the new law accessible to local communities have been launched. In practice, there are still great gaps between human rights ideals like the principle of gender equality and self-determination and the local norms that govern women's everyday lives. The condition in which Bakwena women in Botswana and Muslim women in Kenya rely on more than formal law is the main theme in recent books by Susan Hirsch and Anne Griffiths. Showing how women are relying on a combination of individual rights and family-based entitlements for their day-to-day survival, these books demonstrate the complex and uneven process whereby state law molded on human rights ideals originating in the West is making its mark on local customs and practices. With its departure point in these microlevel
TL;DR: The relationship of law to antagonisms and contradictions within state socialism is explored from a Weberian and a Marxian perspective in this paper, where the authors examine the relationship between law, court decision making, legal control of economic behavior, and law enforcement.
Abstract: The relationship of law to antagonisms and contradictions within state socialism is explored from a Weberian and a Marxian perspective. Examining legislation, court decision making, legal control of economic behavior, and law enforcement reveals contradictions between (I) a radical participatory ideology versus muted or extinct civil society; (2) the ideology of comprehensive planning versus the impotence of law; (3) strategies aiming at total control of public life versus the emergence of a niche society outside the reach of the state; (4) regulatory norms versus the functional necessity of norm-breaking behavior; (5) reliance on a revolutionary sense of justice versus the cultivation of “doublethought”; (6) a program of total control of economic behavior versus the emergence of deviant, even criminal, forms of organization to fulfill functionally necessary but ideologically unapproved economic tasks; and finally, (7) two distinct practices of law, responsive or postliberal versus repressive. Yet, contradictions typically did not lead through conflict to subsequent reform during the state socialist era, as conflicts were repressed. When reforms were attempted, they furthered conflict and system breakdown.
TL;DR: The outrageous history of German judges during the Third Reich should not so structure historical research as to distract historians from examining their role in the nineteenth century as discussed by the authors, and they played an important role in electoral politics by serving as parliamentary deputies between 1849 and 1913.
Abstract: The outrageous history of German judges during the Third Reich should not so structure historical research as to distract historians from examining their role in the nineteenth century. Prussian judges played an important role in electoral politics by serving as parliamentary deputies between 1849 and 1913. This essay poses and answers two questions: What was the political, legal, and social setting that led to judges sewing in parliament? And, why did their number decline after 1877? Theoretical discourses of separation of powers, construction of a Hegelian “general estate,” and independence of the judiciary converged with administrative-legal-constitutional developments in Prussia begun under the absolutism of the eighteenth century and professional and personal interests of judges to bring them into parliament, often as members of the liberal opposition. But success in the liberal project of building a national state, including legal reform, professionalization, and the advent of mass politics, reduced the need and attraction for judges in parliament, resulting in a decline after the 1860s.
TL;DR: Closed Chambers: The First Eyewitness Account of the Epic Struggles Inside the Supreme Court is a lively and well-written clerk's-eye view of the U.S. Supreme Court during a pivotal and contentious term as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: Written by a former law clerk to Justice Harry Blackmun, Closed Chambers: The First Eyewitness Account of the Epic Struggles Inside the Supreme Court is a lively and well-written clerk‘s-eye view of the U.S. Supreme Court during a pivotal and contentious term, 1988-89. Lazarus vividly evokes what it feels like to participate in the day-to-day business of the Court. That powerful first-person narrative is reminiscent of William H. Rehnquist’s account of his days clerking for Justice Jackson in 1952 (1987). Rehnquist’s book blends the high drama of being present in Washington and inside the marble tower for the landmark case of Youngstown Sheet and Tube Company v . Sawyer, 343 US. 579 (1952), with his highly personal narrative of the young man from the West (Arizona and Stanford) having his first piece of pie in the cafeteria of this great institution and agonizing over the briefs in his first case.
Journal Article•
TL;DR: Lempert, Chambers, and Adams as discussed by the authors studied the careers of minority and white graduates of the University of Michigan Law School and found that LSAT scores and undergraduate GPAs have no relationship to success after law school, whether success is measured by earned income, career satisfaction or service contributions.
Abstract: Lempert, Chambers, and Adams's superb new study of the careers of minority and white graduates of the University of Michigan Law School will come as welcome news to those who value diversity on this nation's college and professional school campuses. Alongside the Bowen-Box study (1998), to which the authors link their work, the Michigan data provide powerful evidence of the many benefits of affirmative action for both minority and majority students, as well as for a constituency that is often overlooked in the debate over affirmative action—namely, the people these aspiring professionals are intended to serve. More important, the authors' careful analysis reveals what many have long suspected. LSAT scores and undergraduate GPAs “seem to have no relationship to success after law school, whether success is measured by earned income, career satisfaction, or service contributions” (Lempert, Chambers, and Adams 2000, 401).
TL;DR: In this paper, a decade of research in which Robert Nelson, a sociologist of law, combined forces with William Bridges, who has studied labor markets, led to an unusual and creative approach.
Abstract: Legalizing Gender Inequality results from a decade of research in which Robert Nelson, a sociologist of law, combined forces with William Bridges, a sociologist who has studied labor markets. This combination led to an unusual and creative approach. The authors chose four class-action court cases involving sex discrimination in pay, and did in-depth studies of the judicial decisions, testimony, exhibits, and depositions from each. They also obtained and reanalyzed statistical data sets involved in the cases and, where possible, interviewed key actors.
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors examine the ethics of volunteering from the perspective of death row defense attorneys and find that most are faced with profound ethical dilemmas, both professional and personal, when a client elects to waive appeals.
Abstract: When death row inmates elect to waive appeals and proceed directly to execution a series of problematic legal and ethical questions are raised. This article examines the ethics of volunteering from the perspective of death row inmates'defense attorneys. Studying attorneys is important for two reasons: since they are charged with protecting their clients' interests they must resolve the difficult question of whether death is ever in someone's best interest; and perhaps more important, most death row defense attorneys are themselves against the death penalty and must thus negotiate between their clients' desire for execution and their own personal value systems. Interviews were conducted with 20 attorneys who have participated in representing would-be volunteers. Qualitative analysis suggests that most are faced with profound ethical dilemmas, both professional and personal, when a client elects to waive appeals. This article explores how attorneys interpret, experience, and resolve those dilemmas.
TL;DR: Lempert et al. as discussed by the authors expressed their gratitude to the editors of Law and Social Inquiry for securing these commentaries and to the people who wrote them, highlighting the potential uses to which their research and similar studies may be put and give us the opportunity to address methodological concerns and questions that other readers of our article may share with those who commented on it.
Abstract: Before making a few remarks in response to those who commented on our article (Lempert, Chambers, and Adams 2000), we would like to express our gratitude to the editors of Law and Social Inquiry for securing these commentaries and to the people who wrote them. The comments both highlight the potential uses to which our research and similar studies may be put and give us the opportunity to address methodological concerns and questions that other readers of our article may share with those who commented on it.
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors argue that the legal decision on conflicting expert testimonies in the field of forensic psychiatry and psychology resulted from a much more complex intersection of power, struggles between law and science, but also among scientists.
Abstract: Truth is a thing of this world: It is produced only by virtue of multiple forms of constraint —Michel Foucault 1977 Law is less than ever the exclusive domain of legal experts However, scientific experts often disagree on what constitutes scientifically reliable and valid knowledge In sociolegal debates about whether luw or science is ultimately decisive in this decision-making process, the focus is primarily on the competition between the powers of law or science Using a detailed analysis of a Dutch appellate case of a battered woman who killed her husband, I will argue that the legal decision on conflicting expert testimonies in the field of forensic psychiatry and psychology resulted from a much more complex intersection of power, struggles between law and science, but also among scientists Various aspects of expert testimony, unrelated to the scientific validity of the knowledge, profoundly influence how specialized knowledge from experts will or will not be validated by the law Such aspects include status differences between institutionalized and less-established disciplines, and gender bias While exercising its ultimate obligation and power to judge in an arena of disputing experts, law in this case rhetorically constructs an image of rationality, Objectivity, and neutrality of its own decision-making process In so doing, it masks the underlying umbiguities, its arbitrariness, and its gender bias in the process of inclusion or exclusion of expert knowledge
TL;DR: The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 as discussed by the authors was a seminal event in the history of the American Civil War, which transformed the sectional conflict into a community crisis more directly than the passage of the Civil War.
Abstract: No event of the antebellum period transformed the sectional conflict into a community crisis more directly than the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. Designed to overcome the reluctance of some northern jurisdictions to recognize slaveholders' claims on alleged runaways, the summary process provided federal assistance for slave catchers and checked potential instruments of local subversion by dispensing with juries, inducing enforcement officers to act vigorously, and providing protection against potential rescues. The legislation forced African Americans in the free states to decide whether to flee from their homes or risk kidnapping, and it prompted some northerners to unite in defense of their neighbors through forcible resistance to the law.
TL;DR: In Oshkosh, Wisconsin, the city in which I live, there stands a fine example of a Civil War memorial, a monument with three sculpted Union soldiers: an officer with a drawn sword urging his men into battle, a private ready to thrust forward with his bayonet, and a bugler with his pistol pointed at the enemy as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: In downtown Oshkosh, Wisconsin, the city in which I live, there stands a fine example of a Civil War memorial, a monument with three sculpted Union soldiers: an officer with a drawn sword urging his men into battle, a private ready to thrust forward with his bayonet, and a bugler with his pistol pointed at the enemy The monument was dedicated on July 8, 1907, one of many monuments dedicated in the big cities and small towns of the North and the South in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, monuments designed to keep alive memories of martial sacrifice, to give meaning to great loss that still resonated in the culture, to offer pedagogy in stone For the generation that lived through the cataclysm of the Civil War feared that future generations would not remember well enough, and monuments were seen as a kind of memorial insurance that lessons-varied as they might be from region to region-would not be forgotten and that the war would be a prominent memory, guiding the actions of individuals and communities for generations to come Oshkosh's Civil War memorial stood on what was called monument square, near the opera house and a large and popular hotel Of course, the location of the memorial-at the center of town-offered a clue as to the
TL;DR: In fact, current interest in the language of the law reflects the more general critical and interpretive trends in social theory as mentioned in this paper, which can be traced to the deconstruction of taken-for-granted aspects of the social order.
Abstract: Scholars of legal processes no longer need to justify their preoccupation with the spoken language of the law. While in the past the study of language in legal contexts was considered an irrelevant if not frivolous endeavor that diverted attention from the serious concerns of law (Sarat and Kears 1996), today law itself has been characterized as communication or as a discourse on society (Humphreys 1985; Nelken 1996). White's notion of law as constitutive rhetoric (1985) and Bourdieu's analysis of law as the struggle for the authorized or legitimized interpretation of the texts of legal corpus and legal practice (1987) have contributed to this language-based redefinition of the law. In fact, current interest in the language of the law reflects the more general critical and interpretive trends in social theory. The deconstruction of taken-for-granted aspects of the social order that has
TL;DR: In this article, Native Americans are often classed with members of subordinated racial and ethnic groups for purposes of antidiscrimination law, multicultural studies, and affirmative action programs; but it doesn't follow that the Native American experience challenging American law can be generalized to these other groups as well.
Abstract: Native Americans are often classed with members of subordinated racial and ethnic groups for purposes of antidiscrimination law, multicultural studies, and affirmative action programs; but it doesn't follow that the Native American experience challenging American law can be generalized to these other groups as well. What Native Americans share with African Americans, Latinos, Asian Americans, and many other racial or ethnic minorities is a history of discrimination, economic marginalization, and forced assimilation. Nonetheless, legal strategies that Native Americans may pur-